The next part in the Diving Universe series. This book continues pretty directly from the last book. There are a lot of consequences that are examined from several viewpoints, from all sides of the multiparty conflict. The separate viewpoints are from The Boss and her friend, Captain Jonathan “Coop” Cooper, who has traveled from thousands of years in the past due to an accident involving an “Anacapa” drive which makes instantaneous travel in space possible (pretty dangerous, but mostly possible), from quasi “Star Fleet” - like an organization called the Fleet, from a Fleet splinter group and from a local empire with inspirations for expanse.
The viewpoints alternated and the characters pondered at length about their next actions. Eventually, there is a space fight and things almost reset to normal.
I was irritated by the attitude of “shoot first and ask questions later”. Wouldn’t the logical thing have been to open communications and find out what every party wants and needs? Also, it was a HUGE coincidence that all that was happening at the same time - there was no actual reason for that. Except from the point of view of the plot.
There were also some huge stupidities in the book. Apparently, dimming the lights in a spaceship is important to save energy. Apparently, faster than light space can’t spare a few hundred watts for lighting? It is also stated that the Empire supposedly had found “a lot” of abandoned dignity vessels. Weren’t they supposed to be a legend; in the first book the Boss hardly believes they even exist when she finds the first one. And now, apparently, there are a lot of them lying around.
The book was pretty slow. On the other hand, a fair amount of things happened, but the overall plot seems to move at a glacial pace. There was some fighting, a lot of plotting, and lots and lots of discussions. Perhaps they were not as excessive as in the former book (at least there were no pages wasted on childcare problems), but almost.
597 pp
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